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AS predicted, jocksniffer radio hosts, listener calls, emails, texts, et al are myopically fixed on Michael Vick’s return to the NFL. The Philadelphia Eagles officially announced the signing of Vick, the man who served hard time for crossing state lines to engage in illegal dog fights. The animal abuse, cruelty, torture & execution, were just incidental to going from Virginia to Georgia to do it. Though a case could be made for just going back to Virginia once you made it to Georgia, which I’ve done myself.

At the Eagles press conference Vick, whose criminal acts fit the FBI profile for serial killer, apparently memorized a list of cliches. Learned behavior is something a sociopath is very good at doing. He is being mentored by Tony Dungy, a former NFL coach & born again Bible scholar, who has his own tragic history. The etymology of both their names aside, I have never enjoyed puppet shows after age 5. The debate over whether or not Vick deserves a return to the NFL took up 99% of ESPN program content today ( August 14 ), running the gamut from the inane to the insane. Best of British luck, ya’ll. . ..

AND 99% of those people discussing Vick are not only ill equipped to do so, they can barely articulate the real issue– has he rehabilitated himself ( ty Arlo )? So, as he goes over to sit on the Group W Eagles bench, I’d like to pose a question the great unwashed can all have an opinion on, and even more to the point, it’s at their level of intellect. Here goes—

Update: August 13, 2009 Michael Vick has been signed by the Philadelphia Eagles. After complying with the conditions of an NFL imposed limbo status, he will have his second chance. That said: to repeat, any moron using the ” culture ” excuse for abusing animals— then your culture is criminally ill. AND as far as I know Vick’s culture is the United States of America. If you think that behavior is acceptable in the US, have someone read the penal code to you. Slowly.

The release of Michael Vick from Federal custody has provoked a fresh round of debate. Most of it concerns whether or not he should be allowed to resume his career in the National Football League. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has not yet announced a ruling on this matter, and when he does, the fire will really burn up sports talk radio lines.* Those freaks will trot out their legal experts & PETA deriding jokes. Topped off with the usual unhealthy dose of their Oprah informed grasp of psychology.

That’s not what’s burning me though. I just had to listen to a caller on WFAN claim it is ridiculous to not accept the practices of other cultures. This is a moronic argument for excusing dog fighting ( for which Vick was imprisoned, along with torturing & killing the animals ) & another favorite, cock fighting. For the uninitiated, which is to say, civilized humans, that would be roosters. UK actor Ricky Gervais was recently in the news for taking a stand against bull fighting. I am with him—I think Pamplona’s running of the bulls has also out run its course. Just ask the guy who got gored to death. My opinion is this kind of entertainment is not a part of a culture which gets grandfathered in & perpetuated, it is a clear lack of any semblance of culture.

The host of the program, suggested many of us don’t understand why these ” sports ” exist. Hey! listen genius I understand. It is born of desperate poverty, in which those with a pocket of power, prey on the weak minded & empathy bereft. It is based on betting & the need to feel a victory, employing animals as surrogates; animals who cannot give consent. It is deviant behavior on anyone’s dance card, and claiming your society has a right to do it, is frankly bull shit.

In segments of Africa the village male leaders remove the clitoris from their females. That’s their culture. Is that something we should all just accept? They have their reasons—and it’s their ballpark. And it is the product of the power mad and ignorance run rampant, kept in place by strong arm tactics & fear. Do I equate that with animal fighting? Yes. It is men, abusing their authority for the purpose of controlling another living things innate biological urge. I’ll pass on any twisted humor. It is simply the strong ( ? ) victimizing the weak.

I think Michael Vick can be given a second chance, for all the usual liberal reasons. He paid his debt blah blah blah. I also think if he steps in dog shit & even says one hard word, they should lock his ass up again. You know what I mean, so don’t get all jiggy. Play football, and stop getting off on animals. Vick was not a quality pro quarterback; he ran more than he passed ( he’s not very good at it ) & that led to injury. But he is a gifted athlete, so a change of position might work. When it comes to his recreational choices, he can slip into his Ron Mexico persona and have fun in Vegas, gambling with easily impressed dancers & hookers. They’ll be glad to do it doggy style.

AS for Vick’s apologists on both sides of the microphone. You can barely articulate a valid opinion on sports. Keep honing that meager skill and don’t start spouting off regarding culture. You probably wouldn’t know culture if somebody spilled yogurt on you. I’m pretty sure you’d sucker punch them, since it’s no doubt a proud part of your culture.

* Goodell has allowed Vick in the NFL pending a decision by game 6 of the 2009 season, reinstatement on hold based on the comissioner’s discretion. AND the talk is carpet bombing the airwaves now Vick has signed w/the Phila. Eagles.

” We love our god and our guns. . ..” this a direct quote from a political ad, approved by John McCain, running on a local radio station here in the New River Valley of Virginia. A political statement meant to exhort Virginians to vote against Barack Obama, because he apparently doesn’t love their god or their guns. Love means cleaning, oiling & fondling your grandaddy’s 30 aught 6.

They love guns here all right. They love to sell them too. That’s how a mental patient, who slipped through a loophole in the VA TECH student psych screening process, bought two guns here in Virginia. Then took them to school for Show & Kill. Who is their god? Glock? or the twin deities, Smith & Wesson?

Not too far from here, about 10 miles as the Jim Crow flies, there still stands the site of slave cabins. No doubt my own house is built above the unmarked graves of somebody who caught a free cruise to the land of the free. This area rarely has a sunny start to a day.* Often, it’s more a mist, I call it gray-light. Maybe it’s the angry gun god, all smoke and bitter ash for dirty deeds. Or possibly the arsenal also, just down the road apiece. . ..

I have said previously, the President of the United States is a spokes model. He/she(?) walks point for the daily patrol-an important job, yes. But the chief exec leads the team out front. There are those no longer so deep in the shadows, who run things. Those guys have no gods. This, because they think they are them. What they do best is send out people to do things for them, destabilize a Third World country or prop up a druglord in a slag heap ending with -stan. Then they trot the Pres out to meet the press for an atta boy and a tutorial in spin doctoring.

Doing that needs lots of guns and money. No doubt Mr. Obama would prefer to use what’s left of the American economy to keep us strong at home. Roofs over our heads and a chicken in every pot and/or microwave. But that kind of thing upsets the ‘ foreign policy ‘ of the power brokers who work behind the curtains of the Oval Office.

Hollywood has remade a classic flick, The Day the Earth Stood Still. The premise of which is, extraterrestrial is sent to Earth to terminate it. Mainly due to our warlike ways. Naturally this is greeted with loads of firepower, which makes the alien think it’s actually on Mars, named after the god of war. Right after the shameful name of the NFL franchise in our nation’s capitol is changed, I’m petitioning the new administration to switch from Earth to Mars. Or at least the Dirty 3rth. Hey, yo I’m street, dogg!

When a political party’s endgame endorsement has god & guns as the slam dunk argument for its candidate, you know it’s in trouble. If McCain really heard that ad and approved it, it’s troublesome. If a lackey rubber stamped it for him, it’s even more so. I knew we were backwards here, but this is straight out of the Johnny Reb Handbook. The South will rise again? well not before my dinner does.

So, while I continue to live in Bubbadoon,* where it’s always 1808 with football & cell phones—their god approves of some new fangled things! I get out my pork rinds & moonshine, ready to watch the election returns. Who will win—Hatfield or McCoy? er, um I mean Obama or McCain. Actually, I thought Obama was an Irish name- what? you never heard of the Black Irish!

Barbara Walters has confessed to having an affair with a US Senator. Hold on, I need to drink some Red Bull.

Ahhh, that’s better. I almost yawned myself to death writing about Barbara Walters. She is so far past the expiration date, the FDA should issue an alert. Walters suggests had it been known, this illicit liaison could’ve ruined her career. My suggestion would be, does anybody have a time machine? I’d gladly give up going back in time to pay more personal attention to a young Anna Quindlen in HS, just to make sure Barbara never had a career. Oddly, it might serve to further my own journalistic pursuits. Hmmmmm

Meanwhile, lots of stuff has happened during my hiatus. Most of it is the s.o.s., so don’t worry, in 6-9 months it will all circle around. Again. My favorite though, me being a dude who blogs globally but bitches locally, was the gun dealer who spoke at Virginia Tech.

In case you missed it, yes, he’s the !@#&*%er, who sold 2 weapons to that piece of shit psycho. Of course his main argument was how could he know. After all, this is the USA and everyone has a right to make a living (?) and to bear arms. Somebody has to sell guns to wackos, so, why shouldn’t it be him. However, for the sake of Karmically balancing that idiot, the universe immediately killed off Charlton Heston.

OK. He’s correct. It’s not his fault that monster slipped through the PC psych vetting for students. Or that the Commonwealth of Virginia permits weapons to be sold. Virginia is more concerned with busting people who don’t wear seat belts & taxing citizens who buy frivolous luxury items, for example, like FOOD! Just a guess, more people drive cars to buy food than guns in the course of any given day.

I chose not to read much about this campus visit. Does me no good to get even more irate. I would like to know why the police can’t sell the guns. Wouldn’t they be better able to investigate and evaluate a customer? might even catch a few of them without their seat belts buckled too.

Heads up to any potential gun buyers, if you’re bringing donuts to grease the wheels with the cops, VA doubles the tax on any donuts you buy, if they are packaged by the store ( prepared food tax lol ). Get you enraged? have you ever considered visiting a TV show live? You know what would be a good one? The View. Just a thought.

What a week for the self righteous. And for the type who think showing up late to a party, makes you sophisticated. Not to mention me, a person with more than one dimension, all of which are worn out by the same old shit. Michael Vick gets sentenced. Then MLB does a mea culpa for use of performance enhancing drugs ( PED ) and famous pretentious windbag Oprah Winfrey, throwing her considerable weight ( it yoyos ) behind Barack Obama.

First, Vick. Jock thug gets busted for an illegal ‘ sport.’ Apparently making millions of dollars doing his questionably legal sport, football didn’t meet his needs. Sadly, he has supporters, who say things such as—it’s only dogs-or-dogfights are part of the culture he was raised in-or-he’s a moron, what do you expect! OK, I said the last one. To date, my suggestion to take all his earnings & use them to help animals, seems to be ignored. The Atlanta Falcons, his former team, is more concerned with recovering the monies they’ve paid him. This isn’t just because they’re justifiably disappointed, but so they can remove this huge amount from their payroll and open up room in the salary cap, the proscribed $ limit they can spend for player salaries per season.

Another aspect of the Vick conviction, is what happens after he successfully serves his time, 23 months. Theoretically, since many spend jail time in the gym, Vick will still be young and fit enough to make a football comeback. I can say what I want about his lack of intellect, the guy has mad athletic skills. My opinion is: if he can play again in the NFL, I say let him. Take half of his pay and use it to help animals. Yes, I am dogged with my suggestions, like hmmm a pitbull! Oh yeah, and create a restraining order involving him & dogs. . ..

Bud Selig, former used car salesman and owner of the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team & current commissioner of baseball, finally noticed some players had fatheads. This wasn’t just from a disproportionate sense of self worth. Nope, it was from anabolic steroid abusage, which rhymes with dope. Selig hired former Senator George Mitchell, once on the board of directors for the Boston Red Sox, to head an investigation into the use of PED in professional baseball. Gee, maybe they should start by ridding their sport of conflicts of interest first. Our sitting President, G.W. Bush, was once the owner of a MLB team. He & Congress would like nothing better than to really get in on this ( they did previously in 2005 ). Can you say: Major League Distraction?

The report came out yesterday December 13 and several names of alleged users are provocative. This fuels the jock talk in the media. For me, it’s excellent. It bumps time from the sick radio & TV network obsession with football. It won’t last, but it’s something.The lords of baseball are like dads who finally figure out the reason their kid is burning incense isn’t because the kid has embraced Buddhism. Now daddy is pissed—no kid of mine is gonna be a hophead— kind of thing. Sigh. Yes, some of these drugs are now illegal. Yes, they could cause future health risks to the user: at least one athlete has died from steroid use, Lyle Alzado, a football player. That this fact is a throw away AND that it occurred well over 10 years ago, shows the continued cupidity, if not culpability of sports suits and their ancillaries, sports writers, reporters, fans etc. Did I mention football?

It remains to be seen what these buttoned down boardroom blowhards will do to rid the baseball world of dopers. A world they encourage & enable by demanding performance, which due to expansion has diluted & spread thin the premiere performers & allowed many to linger on at older ages and/or make major league rosters, who once would’ve been career minor leaguers. Some of the use was to speed up the healing from injury, to simply return to performing, as opposed to unfairly enhancing it. But illegal is illegal. Now. Hey, daddy needs to bring home the bacon. But this and the Vick situation raises the dilemma of authority favoring curative versus preventative solutions. See how well the war on the rest of the drugs has gone! Not. I bet the sales numbers on Kentucky whiskey & cigars goes way up. Though not Cuban cigars. Those are still illegal. Unless you have a source.

Root cause(s) need to be addressed. Oh, I don’t advocate letting off a rapist, child molester, mass murderer because they had early childhood trauma. It’s not easy or effective yet, accurately predicting who will grow up to be a Manson or a Mother Theresa. Or even if we could, what to do about it. I sure hope that’s where the real effort must be. Better prisons or smarter lawyers ain’t gonna do it. So, good luck.

Now as for Oprah’s endorsement of Mr. Obama. I bet she wrestled long and hard. Hillary or Barack? Over and over. I’d say maybe two commercial breaks worth. Obvious which way she’d go. Hey! he’s from her home state of Illinois. I so wanted to use a black & white( meaning obvious ) decision. My third choice was slam dunk, but everybody knows white women can’t jump.

I would like to take this opportunity to endorse Mr. Obama too. This does not bode well for him, based on my political track record. As much as I’d like to see a woman in the Ovule, errrr Oval Office*, Mrs. Clinton has way too much baggage on so many levels, including the problem of what to call the first Presidential male partner**, who just also happens to be a former President! The First Man? too anthropological. First Husband? technically accurate on 2 counts. First ex-Pres and guy in US history in this situation? shorten it to Expotus, sounds Greek, a foreshadowing of the theatrics sure to follow. I like that one best. BTW there is no prize for observing how many capital O’s were necessary to create these two paragraphs.

The kings & queens of hindsight are speaking. The media is all lathered up. Suddenly all the information is available about the twisted soul who murdered 32 people at Virginia Tech. Seems as if he wasn’t suited for campus life, especially at such a large university. Seems as if he had socialization & communication problems. Oh, and those who vetted his admission, ‘ misinterpreted ‘ rules about an individual’s medical privacy.

In much the way the events of September 11, opened the door for more stringent laws regarding homeland security, I can see trouble ahead in dorm life. All twitchy Gen X-boxers, better keep their Wiis-wiis in their pants, or face the consequences of not making it past level 1. Here we go again, classic WASP misdirection. David Copperfield got nothin’ on them dudes.

I’m not a fan of VA Tech. I think they also dropped the ball, literally and figuratively with the Vick brothers. Coach Bubba & alums can dissemble & get as huffy as they like, but they dragged these individuals out of their rough surroundings because of their athletic skills. Now both are nothing short of criminals; talk about being asocial! What thought was given to that while recruiting them? they didn’t really fit anywhere but a football field, and Marcus not so much. Sure, Michael Vick got his NFL payday and we’ve seen the results. Add his recent woes to his lousy pass completion stats & Falcon brass are not all that weepy. . ..

The state of Virginia btw, gets no pass from me, in the case of the VA Tech tragedy. They sold a dangerous person a gun. Oh wait, make that 2, though they did make him wait another 30 days. This bullshit about warning the campus is also a huge ‘ what if. ‘ Yes, I think it would’ve been prudent. No doubt many of the deceased would not be. However, the perpetrator of such venomous intent, might well have escalated into unimagined realms. The chances to change the outcome, was long before that day. Long before.

The cliche ‘ only human ‘ applies here exponentially. All involved were, and are, only human. I admire the spirit of the Tech student body & wish them all the best forever. But the state & their institute of high learning, needs to address many things, rather than say, sucking revenue from unfastened seat belts & rabid football fans. I don’t advocate jailing any kid who carries around a copy of The Anarchist’s Handbook. But if anyone sees him around campus with floor plans, pointing at buildings, while making cartoonish ‘splodey sounds & laughing like DeNiro in Cape Fear, show some %$*#! sense. Focus his mad subterranean gaming skills & send him spelunking with some new high-tech weaponry in the ‘stans. . ..

I am no fan of Michael Vick or the mechanism which fosters the careers of those like him. As for the crime he is alleged ( as of this moment ) to be guilty of—I don’t even like dog racing. Cruelty to animals or any living thing, is an abomination.

Sending a person to prison is no doubt merited, depending on the nature of the crime & an individual’s prior record of malfeasance. However, I see no profit in punishing Michael Vick this way. I am not here to indict Virginia Tech, they are one of hundreds of big time college sports programs which recruit young people, who barely know what a college is, because they have incredible athletic skill. Yet, I am sorry to say, VA Tech has dropped the ball here & failed more than one Vick, literally in providing them with a philosophy of life beyond a big pay day.

But what will be gained by imprisoning Mr. Vick? If he is found guilty, either by his own admission or a trial, why not take advantage of this situation. Be creative with the punishment. Why not use every resource possible, and at his own expense, to rehabilitate Michael Vick, in a controlled yet enlightened environment. Educate him as to why what he participated in was wrong, and not just teach him to be sorry for getting caught at it. Use his money to educate others & to give aid & comfort to rescued animals.

So, to the judge & prosecuting attorney, please consider making your case & ruling a landmark. It can only lead to better things for man & animal, the state of Virgina and the quality of life. Sometimes the letter of the law needs a visionary hand to expand it’s message to humanity.